WEBVTT - What's the History of Frozen Dinners? 0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:07.600 Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff, 0:00:07.680 --> 0:00:12.080 Lauren vogelbam here, what would we see if we peeked 0:00:12.080 --> 0:00:15.520 into your fridge carefully prepared meals for the week, plus 0:00:15.680 --> 0:00:18.640 ingredients to riff on? Or are we looking at more 0:00:18.760 --> 0:00:22.040 like takeout containers or a mess of condiments and nothing 0:00:22.079 --> 0:00:26.960 to put them on? Maybe something unrecognizably fuzzy or gozer 0:00:28.160 --> 0:00:32.440 No shame here aside from Mesopotamian gods. Some combination of 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:36.000 the latter describes the fridge shelves belonging to many of us. 0:00:36.520 --> 0:00:40.720 Maybe it's a busy schedule stress or just undeveloped cooking skills, 0:00:41.080 --> 0:00:43.320 but it can be hard to make a home cooked 0:00:43.360 --> 0:00:49.280 dinner or breakfast or lunch, So frozen meals to the rescue. 0:00:50.720 --> 0:00:53.880 A freezing foods for eating later is nothing new. Humans 0:00:53.920 --> 0:00:57.600 have been doing that for millennia, but prepared frozen meals 0:00:57.680 --> 0:01:00.960 ready to be reheated and eaten didn't come around until 0:01:01.000 --> 0:01:05.160 technological innovations in the nineteen hundreds led to affordable refrigerators 0:01:05.240 --> 0:01:11.200 and quick freezing machines. No one person invented frozen convenience foods. 0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:13.959 It took a bunch of steps a few mishaps and 0:01:14.200 --> 0:01:19.160 some smart marketing. But let's step back from frozen meals 0:01:19.200 --> 0:01:23.240 to frozen foods period. The high quality frozen foods that 0:01:23.319 --> 0:01:26.680 retain their texture and flavor when reheated can be largely 0:01:26.760 --> 0:01:31.480 credited to one Clarence Bird's eye. Yes, that Bird's eye. 0:01:32.319 --> 0:01:35.759 He developed a system of packing and flash freezing fresh 0:01:35.760 --> 0:01:39.080 food back in the nineteen twenties. These two parts of 0:01:39.080 --> 0:01:42.200 the process, the packing and the flash freezing, are critical 0:01:42.600 --> 0:01:45.920 because you've got two main obstacles to food being appetizing 0:01:46.080 --> 0:01:51.120 once it's reheated. One is freezer burn, which happens when 0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:54.880 frozen foods are exposed to enough circulating air that ice 0:01:54.960 --> 0:01:58.480 crystals on the surface layer of the food evaporate, leaving 0:01:58.520 --> 0:02:02.600 a terrible little dry i pocket behind. The best way 0:02:02.640 --> 0:02:05.120 to prevent this is to seal food in air tight 0:02:05.200 --> 0:02:10.240 packaging with the surface tightly covered. The second obstacle to 0:02:10.280 --> 0:02:14.680 overcome is mushiness. This occurs because most things that we eat, 0:02:14.800 --> 0:02:18.959 alike meats and vegetables, contain a lot of water. When 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:22.880 water freezes, it expands and forms ice crystals of increasing 0:02:23.000 --> 0:02:26.880 size that can break up cell walls within food, which 0:02:26.919 --> 0:02:30.920 means that food will be mushy when it's reheated. But 0:02:31.280 --> 0:02:34.320 if you freeze something very quickly, the size of the 0:02:34.320 --> 0:02:37.239 ice crystals that form will be small and hopefully won't 0:02:37.280 --> 0:02:40.839 rupture those cell walls, and thus the food will hold 0:02:40.960 --> 0:02:44.880 up a lot better. Bird's Eye worked out both of 0:02:44.880 --> 0:02:48.320 these issues and launched the Bird's Eye Frosted Food Company 0:02:48.400 --> 0:02:52.120 in nineteen thirty with eighteen types of fish, other meats, 0:02:52.200 --> 0:02:56.560 fruits like raspberries, and vegetables like spinach. It wasn't an 0:02:56.600 --> 0:03:01.000 immediate success, but partially because canned goods were already so popular, 0:03:01.320 --> 0:03:04.919 and partially because lots of stores and homes didn't have 0:03:05.040 --> 0:03:12.040 mechanical refrigerators. World War II helped the American War Production 0:03:12.160 --> 0:03:15.799 Board enacted restrictions on metals like ten for use in 0:03:15.840 --> 0:03:18.760 the war effort. Cans were made of tin, and so 0:03:18.880 --> 0:03:22.240 buying canned goods at grocery stores cost more ration points 0:03:22.280 --> 0:03:26.480 than other foods. Besides that, lots of canned food production 0:03:26.600 --> 0:03:31.840 lines had been turned to making rations for armed forces overseas, 0:03:31.840 --> 0:03:36.040 so back at home, grocers started stocking frozen foods, sometimes 0:03:36.120 --> 0:03:40.520 in leased refrigerators. After the war, sales of home refrigerators 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:47.200 picked up two Meanwhile, inventors had already started creating frozen meals. 0:03:47.760 --> 0:03:50.480 In nineteen forty four, a company had started producing the 0:03:50.480 --> 0:03:53.920 line of complete meals frozen on individual resin coated paper 0:03:53.960 --> 0:03:57.840 trays that they called strato plates, originally for the Navy 0:03:57.920 --> 0:04:02.200 and then later for the commercial airline AM. The first 0:04:02.240 --> 0:04:05.240 frozen meals hit the consumer market in nineteen forty nine, 0:04:05.360 --> 0:04:08.400 when a Pittsburgh area company began selling fridge dinners on 0:04:08.520 --> 0:04:14.680 aluminum trays. However, it was Swanson's massive nineteen fifty four 0:04:14.800 --> 0:04:18.760 advertising campaign that sealed the deal on frozen meals for consumers. 0:04:19.640 --> 0:04:24.000 Plus the rise of a technically unrelated device, the television, 0:04:25.839 --> 0:04:30.240 After World War II, television experienced wild growth. It went 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:32.800 from being something a few thousand people had in their 0:04:32.800 --> 0:04:35.640 homes in the nineteen forties to something over half the 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:40.440 population had by nineteen fifty five. Swanson called their new 0:04:40.480 --> 0:04:44.200 frozen meal a TV dinner to ride the exploding wave 0:04:44.240 --> 0:04:49.040 of popularity. The story goes that Swanson executive Jerry Thomas 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:52.520 got the idea to enter the frozen dinner foray after 0:04:52.560 --> 0:04:55.479 having been served one on a flight in nineteen fifty two. 0:04:56.800 --> 0:04:59.760 The company was simultaneously trying to solve a problem they 0:04:59.760 --> 0:05:04.000 had with Thanksgiving turkey leftovers. Not just a few tupperware 0:05:04.000 --> 0:05:06.920 containers worth either, but we're talking about two hundred and 0:05:07.000 --> 0:05:11.599 sixty tons of turkey. Thomas suggested that the Swanson brothers 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:15.200 freeze the surplus, and two years later they had frozen 0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:19.440 dinners on their local market around Omaha, Nebraska. They got 0:05:19.440 --> 0:05:22.040 the idea to tie the concept in with watching television 0:05:22.240 --> 0:05:24.600 and even shaped the tray a bit like a TV set. 0:05:25.520 --> 0:05:28.880 They sold ten million meals their first year after taking 0:05:28.880 --> 0:05:33.400 their ad campaign national, including a Thanksgiving tray featuring turkey, 0:05:33.480 --> 0:05:37.960 corn bread, stuffing, peas, and sweet potatoes. Over the years, 0:05:38.000 --> 0:05:41.520 America's frozen foods have continued to develop two meet our wants. 0:05:42.080 --> 0:05:45.320 More menu options were added, including favorites like fish sticks 0:05:45.320 --> 0:05:48.400 in nineteen fifty three, pizza rolls in nineteen sixty eight, 0:05:48.640 --> 0:05:52.280 and frozen breakfasts like pancakes and sausages in nineteen sixty nine. 0:05:54.040 --> 0:05:56.840 A glance into the freezers at your local supermarket is 0:05:56.960 --> 0:05:59.400 all you need to know that today's frozen foods are 0:05:59.520 --> 0:06:02.320 distant comes to the TV dinners of the nineteen fifties. 0:06:03.000 --> 0:06:07.080 There are all kinds of single microwavable plates, bags, with 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:10.480 complete meals for a skillet or baking dish, and party 0:06:10.520 --> 0:06:14.279 sized platters. You can find everything from breakfast sandwiches to 0:06:14.400 --> 0:06:18.120 butternut squash ravioli, lemon grass coconut chicken, to lemon merang 0:06:18.240 --> 0:06:22.640 pie and samosa's to spiral fries, plus classics like meat 0:06:22.640 --> 0:06:26.240 loaf and mashed potatoes and beef stroganof meals, and you know, 0:06:26.520 --> 0:06:30.440 an entire wall of frozen pizzas. The first frozen pizza 0:06:30.480 --> 0:06:35.680 debuted early on in nineteen forty nine. The industry's expansion 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:39.479 into different foods catering to different tastes and health concerns 0:06:39.680 --> 0:06:43.400 like low sodium, gluten free, and vegan options really paid 0:06:43.400 --> 0:06:46.680 off during the first couple years of the COVID nineteen pandemic. 0:06:47.480 --> 0:06:50.920 American consumers stuck at home purchased record high numbers of 0:06:50.960 --> 0:06:54.880 frozen foods in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one. We've 0:06:54.920 --> 0:06:57.240 backed off a bit since then, but the money that 0:06:57.279 --> 0:07:00.320 we've spent on frozen foods has continued to rise due 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:04.919 to inflation and corporate earnings policies. It's estimated that the 0:07:04.920 --> 0:07:08.039 frozen food industry in the US will top eighty billion 0:07:08.160 --> 0:07:11.760 dollars in sales this year twenty twenty four, which means 0:07:11.880 --> 0:07:16.040 it's just about quadrupled in the last twenty years, not 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:18.760 shabby for an industry that's been around for a little 0:07:18.840 --> 0:07:23.720 under a century. By the way, the quick freezing process 0:07:23.760 --> 0:07:27.320 allows foods to retain not just their texture, but also 0:07:27.400 --> 0:07:30.320 a lot of the vitamins, minerals, and other good stuff 0:07:30.360 --> 0:07:33.880 that they tend to lose during the canning process, so 0:07:34.320 --> 0:07:37.640 frozen fruit, vegetables, and proteins are as healthy as fresh 0:07:38.040 --> 0:07:42.280 and a better nutritional choice than canned. However, a lot 0:07:42.280 --> 0:07:45.720 of prepared frozen meals do have a bunch of salt, sugar, 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:49.240 and or fat added, so watch out for that if 0:07:49.280 --> 0:07:51.960 that's something you want or need to watch out for. 0:07:56.760 --> 0:07:59.720 Today's episode is based on the article history of TV Dinners. 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:03.040 Stuff works dot Com written by Maria Tremarky. Brain Stuff 0:08:03.080 --> 0:08:04.960 is production of by Heart Radio in partnership with how 0:08:04.960 --> 0:08:07.200 stuff works dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Klang. 0:08:07.800 --> 0:08:10.880 For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the Aheartradio app, 0:08:11.000 --> 0:08:13.880 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.